First Lives Club: Pretend Blood
Margaret Atwood! Mary Queen of Scots! Chatrooms! Murder! We look at it all this week.
The Facts
Text: First Lives Club: Pretend Blood Author: Margaret Atwood
Genre: Modern fiction, Mystery, Historical, Fantasy Year: 2010
Available: Crimespotting: An Edinburgh Crime Collection
Or read online here: Free!)
Content Warning: some violence, brief mention of attempted rape. Spoilers below!
The Fiction
Last week I talked about legendary Canadian short story writer Alice Munro. This week I talk about Canada's other literary national treasure: poet, essayist, author, and literary critic Margaret Atwood. Because of the wide range of her writing what a person knows Margaret Atwood for might depend on their interests. In academia she is known for her theory on Canadian literature being centered on themes of survival expanding on Northrop Frye's "garrison mentality". If you love poetry you might know her for her numerous published poetry collections. If you like mythology perhaps for her Penelopiad. Atwood is arguably Canada's most famous living novelist on an international scale most recently because of the success of the Emmy award winning adaptation of her novel The Handmaid's Tale.
But we aren't going to talk about any of those because this blog is about short stories. Atwood has published numerous short story collections, unfortunately, unlike Alice Munro, it is difficult to find any of these stories online for free. This week's story is the easiest accessible one, so that's how I chose it. Now lets get a taste of this famous writer.
First Lives Club: Pretend Blood, what is it about? Atwood's literary career has spanned decades, but she has no problem exploring or using the tools of the modern age, such as the internet, in her fiction. In this story she focuses on online chatrooms whose members believe they have lived past lives. The story follows Marla, a woman whose friend Sal, believes she was Cleopatra in another life. Sal marries a man who believes he was Marc Antony. She introduces Marla to "Past Lives" the chatroom where she met her husband. As the story progresses Marla goes from being skeptical, to playing along for fun, to becoming increasingly obsessed with the past life she believes she lived as Mary Queen of Scots.
Reality and fantasy, and imagination and insanity become increasingly blurred when Marla visits Sal (recently widowed because of a mysterious boat accident) in Scotland. Sal has moved on from believing she is Cleopatra to being Elizabeth the First, the monarch who executed Mary Queen of Scots. When Marla steps too far over the increasingly blurred lines of the game the visit ends in bloodshed. Did she go to far into the role play? Or did Mary Queen of Scots finally get her revenge?
The Feeling
There are a lot of elements to this story that I've touched on in this blog before that work really well in the short story medium. Its a mystery, which as we know through the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, and Auguste Dupin is a genre that works really well in the bite sized short story format. Like, The Yellow Wallpaper this story makes us question the reality of the protagonist. Is she loosing her mind, taking the role playing of her past life too far, or is she really Mary Queen of Scots reborn? Do the things she begins to know and feel come down just to obsession, research, and imagination, or has she walked the halls of Holyrood before? Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Atwood doesn't answer those questions about the reality of the story for us and leaves it up for interpretation.
Another classic short story thing that happens in First Lives Club: Pretend Blood, but which I haven't touched on before in this blog is Atwood's focusing on a fascinating sub-culture. Human experience is varied and vast, and sometimes the key to a great story is to crack open a strange or obscure part of that experience for the public. Atwood does this with the online community of Past Lives. The phenomenon of people claiming themselves to be reincarnated historical figures online is real, most recently taking the form of kin culture. (which I will not expand on). This story blends the history of the Tudors with the modern world of online chatrooms, making this a strange combination of both historical fiction, and modern. Similarly the genres of mystery and fantasy are blurred depending on whether one reads Marla as a genuine reincarnation, or just a person who took a game too far.
This story is not very long, but it is paced so well. One of its most effective elements is when Marla's narration starts speaking in the voice of Mary Queen of Scots by using first person pronouns, and thinking/reacting to things as if she was the wronged Queen. It builds up the climax of the story excellently. The twist doesn't come out of nowhere, but is carefully constructed through out the story so that when it happens the tension has been built to lead to a satisfying pay off.
Atwood is a master, juggling multiple balls in the air to make this story pay off: the historical elements blend with the modern. Classic short story tropes such as a mystery and/or the blurring lines of reality are combined with newer trends such as online chatrooms. In both theme and practice this is a story about blurring lines, whether they be lines of genre, time, or reality. Long Live the Queen.
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